410 MICHIGAN BIRD LIFE. 



usually without any yellowish tinge, while the auriculars are grayish white also. The 

 same general differences are found between male and female as in the typical alpestris. 

 Young: Birds just out of tlie nest lack the ear-tufts, but show the long hind claw; upper 

 parts light grayish brown, mottled with blackish, tiic head and neck thickly sprinkled 

 with small white spots, and most of the wing-feathers and coverts with white edgings and 

 narrow black sub-marginal lines; under parts mainly whitish, the breast with numerous 

 dusky spots or streaks, but with little or no sign of the black crescent. 



Male: Length 7 to 7.50 inches; wing 4 to 4.30; tail 2.90 to 3.10. Female: Length 

 G.75 to 6.85 inches; wing 3.70 to 4; tail 2.60 to 2.90. 



189. Hoyt's Horned Lark. Otocoris alpestris hoyti Bishop. (474k) 



Synonyms: Otocorys alpestis hoyti, Bishop, 1896, A. O. U. Committee, 1903, and more 

 recent authors. 



Similar to the northern Horned Lark, alpestris, but the upper parts 

 paler and grayer, the posterior auriculars gray rather than brown, and more 

 of the yellow of the head and neck replaced by white. 



Distribution. — In summer, British America from the west shore of Hudson 

 Bay to the valley of the Mackenzie River, north to the Arctic Coast, south 

 to Lake Athabasca; in winter southward to Nevada, Utah, Kansas and 

 Michigan, casually to Ohio and New York. 



This new subspecies of Horned Lark was described by Dr. Bishop in 1896 

 and is included in the list of Michigan birds on the strength of a single 

 specimen, taken at Grand Rapids (Oberholzer, Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus. 24, 

 812), and two specimens taken in Montmorency county, in the fall of 1908, 

 and now in the collection of P. A. Taverner, Ottawa, Can. The latter skins 

 have been compared with authentic specimens of typical alpestris and 

 hoyti in the collection of J. H. Fleming of Toronto, and there can be 

 little question as to identity. 



So far as known this form does not dijffer in habits from typical alpestris, 

 from which it can be discriminated only by the expert, and with which 

 it doubtless associates in winter. The technical description which follows 

 may give some idea of the bird, but suspected specimens should be sub- 

 mitted to some competent ornithologist for critical comparison before their 

 capture is published. It seems likely that this subspecies occurs as a 

 straggler in Michigan at the same time as the northern Horned Lark, 

 alpestris, but even this fact is not actually known. 



TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION. 



"Similar to Olocoris a. alpestris, but with the upper parts generally paler and more gray, 

 the posterior auriculars gray rather than brown, and the yellow of the head and neck 

 replaced by white, except the forehead, which is dirty yellowish white, and the throat, 

 which is distinctly yellow, most pronounced toward the center. Adult male: Length 

 7.35 inches; wing, 4.54; tail, 3.01; bill from nostril, .41; tarsus, .89. The adult female in 

 spring plumage differs in a similar manner from the female of alpestris, but in the female 

 of hoyti tlie yellow on the throat is much paler than in the male" (L. B. Bishop, Auk, XIII, 

 1896, p. 130). 



